


A Farm with Chickens

by Jennytheshipper



Category: LE CARRE John - Works, Legacy of Spies-John Le Carre, The Looking Glass War - John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 17:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20118940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper/pseuds/Jennytheshipper
Summary: Set after "A Legacy of Spies." Peter and Catherine have a couple of old friends for dinner.





	A Farm with Chickens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idlesuperstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesuperstar/gifts).

“What does your friend, George, like to eat?” Catherine asked. She was brushing out Isabelle’s hair. The little girl looked up at him for an answer as well.

Peter Guillam thought of all the meals he’d eaten with his colleague and friend George Smiley. All the bad pubs, the miserable dinner parties thrown by politicians and circus managers, the sandwiches on stake-outs and the late night ad hoc suppers made up of whatever could be scrounged from the shops. He couldn’t remember George ever enjoying any of it. The one thing he knew for sure was that George detested curry. It was unlikely that his Breton child “bride” (for they weren’t even married in a common law sense) would think of making such a thing. So he simply said, “just make what you would normally make for Sunday dinner, plus a bit extra.”

Sunday dinner was coq au vin, but although they had a farm with chickens, the chickens were more pets than menu items. If he wanted coq au vin, he’d have to get the coq from the butchers in the village. Peter was sent into town with a list and admonished to check at the station to make sure the trains were running on time. Of course he could look that up online, but the wifi at the farm wasn’t the most reliable and Catherine believed that the people that worked at the station would know better than the faceless people that made the reports on the web. She was wary of technology for one so young. You might say, if you were looking to get a smack, that she was fond of antiques, Peter being first among them.

He returned to the farm with the groceries, extra wine, brandy and some bits and pieces from the hardware store for fixing Isabelle’s tricycle. Catherine put the groceries away and Peter retired to the barn to work on the tricycle. After lunch, he managed to get the thing back together. He went inside to fetch Isabelle, but Catherine had just put her down for her nap. The success of Peter’s mechanical abilities would have to be tested later.

Peter was happy to be enlisted peeling potatoes, rinsing lettuce or whatever little galley tasks Catherine would entrust to him. She was not an artist in the kitchen, but she was very competent and she entirely accredited this to careful planning and lots of prep work ahead of time. She made her own stocks, grew most of her own vegetables, and providing she plotted the timing for the full meal, she was practically guaranteed of making something quite wonderful. Peter ate better on the average Tuesday than most people did all year. In this and other regards, he was utterly spoiled and he knew it.

Peter was set to collect the Smileys from the station at six o’clock. At five, he took the car out of the barn and started it. The old 911 roared to life, though it was in need of a wash inside and out. The farm had not been kind to his old Porsche and though he stored it in the barn, it had too often been home to nesting creatures, been blasted by sun or penetrated completely by blowing dirt. It didn’t have much cargo space, but then he couldn’t imagine George having much luggage. Ann, on the other hand, was an unknown quantity when it came to baggage. But the only other option was the truck and he could not imagine George hoisting himself up into the cab, wedging his wife against the gearshift to make room. No, the Porsche would have to do. He ran a damp towel over the seats and dashboard, making streaks through the dust. It was all he had time for. 

He heard the train approaching while he was en route to the station. It would be several minutes before the passengers disembarked, so he used the time to find a good spot near the entrance. He knew George could probably walk him into the ground, but would not want to carry the bags far. It was the principal of the thing. George valued convenience and elegance even though he didn’t require them. 

The train was in the station at last and Peter stood in the station hall craning his neck, looking for George. He spotted Ann first, a smart orange silk scarf tied around her neck, her hair still cut in a precise and tidy bob. Peter hardly recognized the man walking next to her, the man in a smart jacket and sweater, trim and sleek and smiling. It was George! Though he had seen him only a month previous in Germany, he seemed a different man now, refreshed, energetic. Was this the gray, shuffling academic who’d kept him waiting in the University library? It didn’t seem like the same man at all. 

Ann hugged and kissed Peter on both cheeks, George shook his hand warmly and they made their way to the car.

“You still have your Porsche, I see, Peter,” Ann remarked. Peter glanced at George, waiting for some kind of withering comment, but none came.

“I remember you had this in France when you helped me out with Madame Ostrakova” George said.

“Yes, I did.” It was the upholstery.The 911’s checkerboard seats were unforgettable. Peter remembered that George had been quietly appalled by them. He seemed fine with them now. 

Back at the farm, Catherine had Isabelle up and dressed in her Sunday best, a little pink thing with a fairy skirt. Isabelle’s dress was somewhat overshadowed by the riot that the chickens threw when strangers came into the yard. Chevalier started crowing, drowning out any hope of conversation. Peter let Catherine show the Smileys inside while he went to sort out the rooster.

+++

After dinner, George announced that he would “just nip off for a lie down.” After Catherine settled them into the guest room, they shut themselves away, leaving her to hover anxiously in the kitchen while Peter started the dishes.

“Do you think he is sick?”

“I don’t know. He looks well enough. Perhaps he’s just tired.”

“He was very cheerful at dinner. Not as you say the...what is it you call him?”

“Curmudgeon.”

“He was not like the curmudgeon. He was talking very sweet to me.”

“Yes, I noticed. It was very unlike him, I assure you.”

“Well, you only know him from work. Maybe he is different at home.”

“Perhaps,” Peter said, doubtfully. It wasn’t the time to tell her that there is no “only” anywhere adjacent to his work. It had always been consuming. 

As he scraped plates, he ran back over the dinner conversation in his mind. He hadn’t seen George so relaxed, so outright cheerful...well, ever! Perhaps it was a show for Catherine, perhaps it was an effect of true retirement--not the awful forced absences he’d been put through in the past. He thought about how he could explain George to her. They weren’t just colleagues, weren’t just old friends. All those pedestrian words didn’t capture what it was. Family would be closest to the truth: an unsought, permanent connection. Not always pleasant but certainly necessary for survival. And with George he had more than survived. He had thrived. From their first association after the disaster in Morocco, George had understood him, had handled him as precisely and wisely and with as little foolish arbitrary action as any spy had ever been handled. And Peter had in turn repaid him his fiercest loyalty, sometimes his flesh and his sweat, but most often with his presence, for whatever reassurance that might give. Peter hadn’t always been completely truthful with George, but then what agent ever is with his handler. A few secrets were expected. Part of the life. And Peter knew that George had been better off with him than without him. If nothing else, he could look back on that with something like pride.

Catherine poured him another glass of wine and he took a deep sip. “Great, grub, hon,” he said in his best American, and slid his arm around her waist. She kissed him, taking a step forward, unbalancing him so that he had to lean against the counter for support.

“Maybe they just want to be alone,” Catherine said, her voice low and a little husky. 

“George and Ann?” Peter said incredulously. “If it were any other couple, maybe, yes, but not George and Ann.”

“Why?”

“It’s a very English marriage. 

“No sex, please, we’re British.”

“Something like that, yes.”

She kissed him again and it the image flitted through his head before he could stop it: George and Ann retiring early for a night of God only knows, in his guest bedroom. He was slightly horrified. He kissed Catherine again, smoothing her hair with his hand.

He heard someone coming into the kitchen and looked up to find Isabelle, in her nightgown, holding a book up to him.

“Book, Peter,” she ordered. 

Catherine picked her up and put her on her hip. Peter leaned in and gave Isabelle a kiss on the forehead.

“Peter is doing the dishes. I’ll read you a story. Is that alright?

Isabelle reluctantly agreed and said goodnight to Peter as Catherine carried her back to bed. 

He was finishing the water glasses when he heard Ann coming down the stairs, heard her slow, cautious foot fall, no heavier than a cat on the steps. He called out, “Is everything alright?”

“George is fine," she said. "He’s asleep. He needs more sleep than he’ll admit.”

“Don’t we all.”

“Yes, I suppose we do.”

“Where is Catherine?”

“Putting Isabelle down. Again.”

“What a darling. Both of them. You’re very lucky, Peter Guillam.”

“Yes,” he said. 

“Can I help you dry?”

He toed open a cupboard and motioned to a tea towel there. “Knock yourself out.”

“Peter, these glasses haven’t been rinsed,” she complained elbowing her way to the sink. Something of her tone reminded Peter of George. Perhaps she’d been absorbing George all along, he thought.

“Maybe I should dry,” he said, taking the tea towel from her.

“Do you have gloves?”

“Catherine keeps a pair under the sink.”

He fancied that he could see George in the meticulous way she inspected the gloves for tears, and then pulled them on with a snap. Precise. Efficient. Like her husband.

“Oh, dear, Peter, I seem to have completely usurped your place,” she said. Her tone conveyed no regret whatsoever, but merely reported the fact.

“I don’t mind,” he said. He couldn’t quite repress his smile.

“You must tell Catherine that George thoroughly enjoyed his meal.”

“I noticed.”

“He is such an abominable fusspot about food sometimes as I’m sure you know.”

“I might have seen it once or twice. But then the state of cookery is vastly better nowadays. Everyone seems to take it seriously now.”   


“Yes,” she said with excitement, "it really is. Everyone is watching Gordon Ramsey and the like.”

“I was worried that George seems to have lost a fair bit of weight.”

“Yes, it seems that way,” she said. 

There was something off about her tone and Peter continued, “He hasn’t been ill?”

“No far from it. He needs to get more rest, but as I said, I think he is making up for years, decades of too little sleep.”

“Still, he is looking remarkably trim.”

“Yes,” she said with a small smile.

“What?” Peter asked, reaching to pile some plates on a shelf.

“Oh, I shouldn’t say.”

“You realize I’m not going to let it go,” Peter said with mock severity.

I suppose it’s not exactly a state secret. Not anymore.”

Peter’s interest was now truly piqued. He stopped drying dishes and leaned against the counter, fixing his eyes on her profile. She certainly did not look her age. While one might not exactly mistake her for George’s daughter, she had aged very well--something that comes from having had money, Peter supposed. He wondered, perhaps a trifle unkindly, how many gray hairs she'd added to George's head over the years.

“Come on, then. Out with it,” he said, struggling to keep his voice light.

“George has not lost significant weight. He has merely lost his tailor.”

“What do you mean?”  Peter asked. He had of course noticed that George had dressed very smartly in a trim jacket and sweater.

“His tailor was well known as a scoundrel,” Ann said. “Known for overcharging and under performing. And yet,” she said turning to Peter with an impish look, “he maintains a list of very exclusive clients. Most of them come to him with the demand that he makes them look ten years younger and two stone lighter than they are. That he fulfills this task ensures that his client list remains the envy of Saville Row. A few men, George among them, come for a difference service. They want to look ten years older and two stone heavier than they are,” she said, turning to study the effect of her words on him. He was looking at her with his head cocked and his brow furrowed. He figured he probably looked like a confused spaniel.

“Whatever for?”

“Because he thought it would help him blend in. The Americans call it "the little gray man." You don’t notice the little gray man. George wanted to be overlooked and underestimated. Not just by the enemy but at the circus as well.

“And as it turned out,” Peter said thinking of Bill Haydon, “they were sometimes one and the same.”

“Yes,” she said, quietly, the mischief gone from her eye.

Peter instantly regretted it. She had a way of making you ashamed to bring up her bad conduct as if that were the only breach of the social contract that mattered.

“I am shocked. You mean to say all these years…”

“George was not fat.”

“George was not fat,” he repeated. “I see it now. Yes. But I ...can't believe that I didn’t see it before. Ever.”

“He went to a great deal of trouble to make sure you didn’t.”

Peter shook his head, dumb founded. “Who else knew about this? Besides you?”

“No one, beside George, myself and the tailor."

“I’m stunned.”

“ I can see that,” she said. She seemed pleased that he was taking it badly. 

“I wonder why he never told me?” Peter said. He couldn’t help sounding petty. He felt petty. 

“Oh, maybe there was just never the right moment. You know George is a creature of habit and the habit of secrecy is terribly difficult to break.”

“Yes, it is,” Peter said, seriously. Catherine returned then to the kitchen and--probably for the best--interrupted his line of follow up questioning. She whisked Ann away to the living room to drink brandy by the fire, while Peter put on his wellies and an old barn jacket and went outside to do put the chickens to bed.

As he worked, he reflected on what Ann had told him. He viewed George a little differently. Peter was half admiration, half irritation that he’d been kept out of part of George’s life. He remembered a conversation once where George had been playing the fool, making Peter think that he’d lost the plot, where Peter had thought to himself that if it came down to it, he and George and Ann--he’d probably included whatever girl he’d been keen on at the time--as well, could settle together on a chicken farm.

He smiled at the naivete of such an idea now. Even keeping chickens as pets was a lot some days, he thought as he chased the rooster, Chevalier, into his part of the enclosure and latched the door with the little peg. He finished by cleaning up the yard, putting Isabelle’s tricycle away in the barn, locking doors, checking vehicles to make sure that no one had left a key in the ignition. Though the area was quiet, there was always a chance of thieves in these rural places. As he walked back to the house, he looked up at a light on in the second story of the house and realized that George was was looking out, watching him. Peter waved and George waved back a bit absently as if his mind were elsewhere.

Peter walked around to the front of the house and checked the door and the gate. When he came back around to the rear of the house he was surprised to find George Standing on the stoop, lighting a cigar. 

“Would you like one?”

“Why not,” Peter said, unsure whether he’d ever had a cigar with George before. All their ops, all their stake outs and late nights, they had always smoked cigarettes. 

George took a cigar from his breast pocket and handed it to Peter. He procured a small scissors from inside his jacket with which to trim the end of the cigar. When he put the scissors away, Peter had the opportunity to inspect the label in George’s jacket. It was a high street brand, not from a tailor at all.

“Nice jacket,” Peter said. “You’re looking very smart these days.”

“Peter,” George began, drawing his name out like an incantation. “You have been talking to my wife, I believe.”

“Yes, and George, I’m still in shock.”

“That’s being a bit dramatic,” George admonished.

“Well, frankly I don’t see why you kept it from me,” he said, more forcibly than he’d intended.

“Peter dear boy, don’t be cross with me. I had my reasons, you know, at one point to not trust you entirely. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The Leamus affair springs to mind. The girl…”

“Tulip.”

“Yes, Tulip.”

“We all make mistakes, George. I never lied to you.”

“No, but you didn’t tell me everything.”

“A lie of omission is still a sin, eh George?”

“Oh Peter, don’t be vulgar.”

“Then don’t bring up Tulip.”

“Steady, Peter. I was only making a point. Not that I blame you, anyway. You were in love.”

“Another sin.”

“Peter,” George said shaking his head in disappointment. 

“I tried to protect her,” Peter said helplessly. He felt tears burning at the corners of his eyes. The investigation had brought it all back out, opened the old wounds. He had always tried very hard to leave them alone.

“I know. And you couldn’t. And neither could we.” George said and the truth was, after all these years, like a slap across the face. If only the circus had paid attention to George’s methods of interrogation. They might spend less money and get better intelligence. Peter set the cigar on the railing and took a step away from George. 

Peter reached for the easy cudgel. The one so many had used. He weighted it metaphorically, feeling its heft before wielding it. Ann. It always came back to Ann with George.

“I’m just surprised you trusted your wife with that sort of thing, never known what might get talked about across a pillow.

George blew a puff of smoke out somberly. Suddenly Chevalier started to squawk in his cage. Peter was reminded of this namesake in the Bible. _You will deny me three times before the cock crows_. Peter could only see one denial but it had been rather a big one. 

“I’m sorry, George,” Peter said. “That was unfair.”

“Never mind, Peter, it’s an old wound. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Doesn’t it? I don’t see how? I mean she as good as gold now. You’d never know she was..”

“What Peter?’

“You know.”

George sighed. 

Peter felt wretched.

“Well, Ann has told you one of my secrets. I suppose I could let you know something about her.”

“It’s alright. You don’t need to justify. I was out of line.”

“Yes, you were. But I’d like to tell you, I think.”

“Tell me what?” Peter asked taking up the cigar as more of a gesture of reconciliation that out of any interest in smoking it.

“Do you know how I met my wife?”

“She worked at the circus during the war.”

“Yes. Very good. And do you know in what capacity she worked.”

Peter blew out smoke, scratched his head. “Typing pool was it?”

George made a little indignant noise. “Oh that’s what most people believed. And that suited her.”

“Was she in cryptography with Connie’s girls?”

“No, no.”

“What then?”

“She was my handler when I was in Germany. She ran the radio. She was the voice of home, my sanity, my lifeline. 

“My God,” Peter said. He thought of George's description of Jonathan Avery breaking down when he’d lost radio contact with Fred Leiser. Peter had seen Jonathan’s face when he learned that Fred was alive. He could think of no better more intimate start to a marriage. Of course this just made Ann’s repeated betrayals all the more detestable.

“My wife, Peter, has only recently retired from the circus. About a year before me,” George said blowing smoke for effect. 

“You mean she was handling other Joes?” Peter asked, steadying himself on the railing.

“No, no. She quit that work when the war ended. Became an operative. Special assignments.”

“What sort of assignments?”

“A lot of names for it of course, but she prefers to think of it as one long legend, the bored, spoiled wife to the middle aged, fat man that no one much likes or thinks of.”

“So that was her cover,” Peter said, arriving at the idea at last. His head felt muddled like he'd had too much wine.

“Yes. And it worked rather well. The race car driver in Monte Carlo was a suspected opium smuggler. The banker in the City was taking bribes from the Arabs."

“My God,” Peter repeated. He set his cigar down. It had gone out anyway.

“And Bill Haydon?” Peter asked after a long pause.

“Ah, Bill. Bill was different. He was ordered to seduce Ann by Carla.”

“Yes, I know that," Peter said impatiently. Had George forgotten he was there every step of the way when they got Carla? "Did she go along with it? For the circus?”   


“She did her best to put him off. Bill wasn’t easy to resist when he turned on the charm.”

As Jim Prideaux could tell you, Peter thought. 

“But in the end it didn’t amount to much. It seems Bill was more enamored of the idea of wearing my dressing gown and drinking my whiskey than screwing my wife. He was happy to have everyone think that they were at it, of course.

Peter looked away. He wasn’t sure he believed this last bit. Was sure Ann had sold George a lie and he'd swallowed it.

“The tapes of course tell a different story,” George said with a tight smile.

“There were tapes?”

“Of course, Peter, “George said, sounding insulted. ‘She needed evidence in case it turned out he was the mole. ‘And what did the tapes reveal?’ you’re wondering.”

Peter was too stunned to answer but he nodded.

“They revealed that Bill Hayden was, underneath the smooth exterior, a smug, self-satisfied neurotic with a decent tenor voice.”

“Tenor voice?” Peter repeated, stupidly. 

“They often played piano duets. It was something they’d done as kids. They were distant cousins you know.”

“I remember something about that.”

“So they played and sang flirted and had a few half-hearted clinches, enough to keep Carla happy, and for it to get around that I was being betrayed again.”

“How could you stand it, George?”

“It was useful for me too, Peter.”

“Useful?”

“Peter,” George sighed, sounding disappointed. “It was all part and parcel of the same story: the little gray man. The pudgy ageing cuckold whose pretty, rich wife made a sport out of behaving badly. It made me a figure of pity or ridicule, never a threat, never someone to feared. Useful to the Oliver Lacons and the Percy Allelines of this world, mocked and pitied by the Roddy Martindales and the Bill Haydons.”

Peter became aware that he was staring with his mouth open. George reached out his hand and Peter took hold of it. It was thin and cold.

“I don’t know what to say,” Peter said and George let go of his hand and stubbed out his cigar on the railing, brushing away the ash with a flick of the wrist. 

“I’m sorry I’ve kept myself apart from you. You were always worthy you know that don’t you?” 

“It’s alright, George, Ann said something earlier, and in light of...well in light of all this, it strikes me as applicable: the habit of secrecy is difficult to break.”

“My wife and I are very much creatures of habit.”

“Come on, let's go inside, It’s freezing out here,” Peter said with a shiver.

“Yes, I think we should.”

“I’m a bit embarrassed, George. You know I wrote Ann once, scolding her into taking you back.”

George laughed. “I know, she showed me the letter. You were always our champion when no one else was.” 

Inside, Catherine seated George on the sofa with Ann and Peter was allowed to sit in his usual chair by the fire. He was given brandy and sympathy like a shock victim, which he supposed he was.

He watched George and Ann sitting close together on the sofa. How dare they have been happy all this time! The nights he’d spent fretting about George. But he was too tired to be outraged. Things had turned out alright after all. That was something. There was a farm and chickens. George and Ann could stay as long as they liked. He looked over at Catherine, contented by the fire. He was, as Ann had said, a very lucky man.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
